Oldies Week - "Skokiaan" (August Musarurwa)

We're taking a week to look some old African songs that became popular outside the continent. "Skokiaan" is a jaunty Zimabwean instrumental that's been covered by many artists, from Bill Haley to The

Boozing it up is a topic that's generated no small amount of music. One of the first songs featured here at Music of Africa was Yvonne Chaka Chaka's "Umqombothi," which is about a type of beer - often home-brewed - that's popular in South Africa.

Going back a few decades from there, Zimbabwean August Musarurwa (sometimes Msarurgwa) came up with "Skokiaan," about a drink desrcibed thusly, "Skokiaan (Chikokiyana in Shona) is an illegal self-made alcoholic beverage."

Musarurwa wrote the song and was leader of a group called African Dance Band of the Cold Storage Commission of Southern Rhodesia (until independence in 1980, Zimbabwe was known as Southern Rhodesia.) Details are apparently a bit sketchy with regard to the first recording of the song, but it seems that Msarurgwa and his band did so in 1950, although the year 1947 is often cited.

The song was released in 1954, in South Africa, by the Gallo Record Company, credited to August Musarurwa and the Bulawayo Sweet Rhythm Band. Gallo are still doing business today and have an impressive archive of South African music (but I'm getting off track). The cover versions of "Skokiaan" quickly began to multiply. By one estimate, nearly twenty cover versions appeared in about a year after it's release.

By the time the Fifties rolled around, the song was off and running. Like the South African song, "Mbube" or "Wimoweh", by Solomon Linda, probably best known by the version called "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," it made it's way beyond Africa and the cover versions kept multiplying in the United States - where it made it to the upper reaches of the chart - and elsewhere. Louis Armstrong, who did a version of the song, met Musarurwa in 1960 when he toured Africa. Musarurwa died eight years later.

This post opens with a recording of what claims to be the original version of "Skokiaan." As with any song, not all cover versions are created equally. What closes out the post here is a 1954 version of "Skokiaan" by The Four Lads, a Canadian quartet who were popular in the Fifties and Sixties. Their version of the song added vocals and changed things around quite a bit. It was a big hit, but I'll stick with the original.